Luna

by Drucilla

Rated for mildly graphic description of assault victim. A werewolf lands (literally) on Angel's doorstep, and the gang has to deal with the consequences, as well as a mild pack war. Completed.

She was screaming when they first found her. Screaming for someone they guessed was her boyfriend, screaming for her pack, then, when she lost all coherency, just plain screaming. She was also writhing in what appeared to be pure emotional agony, tears streaming from her face like they had a life of their own. Her fingers clutched her arms hard enough to leave bruises, then whatever happened to come into her grasp. When she no longer had breath to scream and her vocal cords had been so abraded, she faded into a kind of hoarse, choking sob, then into a keening wail that just went on and on as she rocked back and forth, tipped over and rolled from side to side. The two apparently young men and the young woman stared down at her not knowing what to do.
"Well, this isn't something that happens every day," the young woman said.

"What should we do with her?" His Irish accent was thick, but not enough to hide the concern. The taller, brooding man next to him shrugged, staring out at the young woman who was even now sleeping in the big bed across from where the three of them were standing. It had taken no small amount of tranquilizers to get her to sleep, and only then were they able to change her clothes; before, she'd been writhing too much for them to get anything off of her. They'd also made a sickening discovery; the tacky liquid that had been on her clothes wasn't filth, or even tears, it was blood, half-dried and congealing fast.
"I don't know... we don't even know what happened to her, or where she comes from."
"Well, one thing's for sure, she can't have been living in more than a small apartment. Look at her clothes," Cordelia came out of the bathroom holding the bundle of clothes they'd taken from her. Normally, Cordelia's observations about clothes were only relevant to perhaps a fashion designer, but in this case...
"You may have something there," the Irishman, Doyle, said, "It looks like she's been wearing these a bit hard, heh?"
The clothes themselves were tattered black jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt. They'd left her underwear on, sponging off the blood as best as they could.
"More than a bit hard," Angel pointed to some places where the clothes had been shredded or cut, then resewn.
"You think she's a ganger, then? Or something like, anyway," Doyle wondered, looking over at her. The girl in question wasn't even sleeping easy, tossing and muttering quietly to herself, crying even in her sleep.
"Something... Angel, what are we going to do? We can't just keep her here," Cordelia looked at the tall, dark, brooding man.
"We're going to have to, Cordelia. It doesn't look like she has anywhere else to go." Now they all looked at her, Cordelia with envy and a sort of reluctant pity, Doyle with concern and the beginnings of abject admiration, and Angel with the absolutely blank expression he normally wore, though there was the usual distanced worry that he felt for most of the human race. "I'll go see Kate," Angel resolved, "Maybe she can give us a lead through Missing Persons or something."
"I'll talk to my buddies, maybe they've heard something..." Doyle was clearly reaching, and just as clearly didn't want to be standing around the house feeling like a fifth wheel.
"I suppose I can go shopping for clothes for her... something that doesn't scream welfare chick." Cordelia made it sound, as she did almost everything else, as a horrible imposition, but her comments lacked the usual bite.
Angel nodded, "All right," and they all made ready to leave when what was trying to be a heart-rending scream came from the bedroom. The three of them bolted back into the room to find the woman sitting up in bed, eyes open wide in a look that tore the heart from each one of them. Still hoarsely attempting to scream, or at least to wail, the woman leaped from the bed and ran for the door.
"Oh, HELL," Doyle said as she bolted past him with what had to be preternatural speed. Angel didn't even bother with speech, just ran her down and tackled her, thanking God that the sun had another half hour to rise. She squirmed and writhed in his grip, nearly managing to break free a couple times. "Hell!" Doyle said again, apparently shocked into incapability of saying anything else.
"Guys, get me a needle and some ludozine..." Angel called, in between wrestling bouts.
"Ludo WHAT?" Cordelia asked, clearly puzzled and beginning to be worried. Doyle finally stopped swearing and ran for the medicine cabinet.
The woman wasn't even rasping out anything coherent anymore, only writhing in Angel's grip and trying to break free. After what seemed an eternity, Doyle emerged with a very full hypodermic. "Do you think that's too much?" he asked dubiously.
"It's not much more than what we gave her earlier, and she's fine now," Angel held her still long enough for Doyle to jam the needle into her arm and pray. Pressing the plunger, he saw that it had indeed entered the vein at the bend of her arm, and he took a moment to thank whatever gods might have been smiling on them. Then he began to pay attention to Angel again, who was muttering to himself. "... Must have a higher metabolic rate than the rest of us."
"Hey, since when did you become ER-man, Mr. Clooney?"
"Since I hung around hospitals to guard the blood shipments," he retorted wryly. After a few minutes, the woman's struggles became weaker, and finally subsided altogether. Angel picked her up and tucked her back into bed. "Doyle, why don't you stay and watch her, you're pretty handy with that needle," he gave the man a grin that was supposed to be reassuring, but instead came off as a bit sickly.
"Yeah, gee, thanks," Doyle muttered as the two of them walked out.

"So, you feeling any better?" Doyle asked the unconscious woman. He didn't get any answer, but then again, he hadn't really expected to. He shrugged philosophically, went to grab himself a beer from the fridge. "You know, you really can talk to us about whatever's bothering you. We're not going to do anything bad to you or anything." Still no response. He supposed that was good, since he didn't think he could run her down on foot as neatly as Angel had, and if she had the preternatural strength as well that she seemed to, she could probably make holding her a very painful experience for him. But then, he had better check on her, he supposed. None of them except maybe Cordelia had gotten a good look at her, and the only thing Cordelia would say was some half-disparaging comments about a rough life. So, Doyle made his way cautiously over to the unconscious woman and turned down the bedsheets just enough to get a modest look at her torso. It's only a woman, he thought to himself, and she's hurt. It's not like you're taking advantage or anything. Right, a little voice in the back of his head went, and how long has it been since any woman's looked at you with anything other than 'get lost, loser' in her eyes? Then all such thoughts were driven from his head as he actually looked at her.
Her skin was a very pale, almost blue-white, like she was one of those Goth types, a would-be vampire, and in places she was very faintly tanned and peeling. Then again, the blue highlights in her hair made the blue-white skin seem almost probable. Doyle couldn't tell what color her eyes were, but he'd bet they were blue too. Still, the extreme coloring wasn't what made him gasp, but rather the angry red welts over her back and shoulders, and the nasty-looking rope burns on her wrists. Almost afraid of what else he'd find, he pulled the sheets back the rest of the way. Sure enough, there were more red welts on her legs, and bruising on her thighs... he stopped just short of parting her legs to make sure of what he already strongly suspected: violent and sadistic rape. Doyle bit back several curses; no wonder she was in such a state. He left her as she was and went to the bathroom to look for bandages and antibiotic or antiseptic lotion.
He was vaguely surprised to find his hands were actually shaking as he took down bottles and packages of bandages from the shelves. Finally, he set things down and gripped the edges of the sink till he could regain some modicum of calm again. He didn't know what it was about her, but there was something about that pale, pale skin, and the vulnerable way she was curled up in the bed, that incited all the male protection instincts and more. There was something about her that should have remained inviolate, and someone (or, a little nasty corner of his brain said, many someones) had desecrated her. That did not sit well with him. After a few minutes, he was able to gather up the stuff and go back out into the main room.
She had barely moved from where he had left her, except to dive further into the covers and curl up there, half-obviously not wanting to be bare, and in a strange place. Doyle winced internally; she wouldn't like what he was about to do. He reached out, and gently took her hand, lifting her arm to swipe alcohol along the rope burns. She gasped, a sharp intake of breath, and lashed out with her foot, sending him flying across the room. He slammed into the opposite wall, his vision blurring, and she rolled out of bed. Aw hell, he thought, there she goes again, and me in no position to stop her. But the tranquilizers had not completely run their course, and she stumbled and fell, tangled in the blankets. He managed to get to his feet, and stagger over to her.
"Easy now, there... you'll hurt yourself that way. I just want to make sure you don't get sick from this, ok?" He approached her slowly, hands out, see, nothing in my hands. Up until then she'd been curled up with her hair falling over her face in a ragged mass, but now she looked up at him through the tangled mess. Her eyes caught his, and he froze, prey animal caught by the predator. Her eyes were so blue they were almost ice-white, frozen like those of a husky or some sort of northern wolf; Beautiful, he thought, so beautiful it took his breath away... and terrifying in the realization that if he did something wrong in the next few moments, she might very well rip his throat out. Slowly, very slowly, he knelt down so that their eyes were level, hands still held out and open. "Look, I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to help you. Ok?"
She didn't really respond, except to hold his gaze for another long moment, till he had to remind himself to breathe. Then she just turned, curled up and stared at the floor. After a long while he realized what her shoulders shaking meant; she was crying again. "Here, now, you can't keep doing that, you'll get dehydrated." Oh hell, he thought, why couldn't Mr. Tall, Dark, and Brooding have been here? He has so much better luck with the girls than I do... Doyle left the bandages and lotion where he'd dropped them and went into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water, then knelt back down at her side with it. "Here, drink this..."
No response. She didn't seem to even notice he was there. Tentatively, half-afraid he'd get his fingers bitten off, he brushed her hair back from her face and put the rim of the glass to her lips. She didn't move, so he hesitantly tipped it a bit, hoping that at least some of the water would spill into her mouth. Just before it became a serious risk of going up her nose, she took the glass from him, moving delicately so their hands never touched. She gulped some down, stared at it as though she'd never seen a glass of water before, then drank the rest of it. She let her hands, with the glass, fall back into her lap, and resumed staring listlessly at the floor. Doyle waited a few moments, then took the glass from her and set it on a shelf. She didn't notice this either. He decided to risk it, and took her hand in his own again and began, very gently, to clean her burns with rubbing alcohol and peroxide. She didn't move this time, though the wounds sizzled up till her wrist was encircled by a grotesque bracelet of white froth. When the last of the bubbling had died down, he wrapped her wrist in gauze and taped it closed, then repeated the process on the other wrist. Encouraged by this, he gently moved her hair around to the front of her face and began cleaning the wounds on her back, speaking mostly to himself as he did so.
"I don't know who did this to you, but we'll get the bastard, I promise you that," he started vehemently. "Angel's pretty good at that sort of thing, you know? Defending damsels in distress, I mean. It's kind of like his calling, if you take my meaning. Cordie and I help him, of course, but it's pretty much his lot in life. Atonement, dontcha know. Then again, I suppose we're all in it for more or less the same reason. Angel says that Cordie's doing it because she wants to be someone... well, more substantial-like, than the girl she used to be. Me, I got my own problems, a family history of them you might say. Well, see, back when..." As his mouth and mind wandered, somehow he had decided that taking off her bra would be a good thing, since it would enable him to get at the welts underneath it. He had, however, conveniently forgotten the conclusions he had come to about what had happened to her, and what effects that would have. As soon as his fingers began undoing the catch, she was up and over the bed. Or at least, that was the idea anyway.
The reality was again, moderately less graceful. She leaped up onto the bed before he could do more than gape, but as she scrambled over it to put the width of it between her and him, she tripped in the blankets, rolled, and fell on her shoulder and abraded back. It didn't help that her throat was already scraped raw from the screaming, and all she could do was to give a choked gasp. Doyle was at her side faster than he wanted to think about.
"Oh god, I'm so sorry..." he was stuttering as soon as he realized what he'd given the impression of doing. "Here, I'll just get the rest of your cuts and then tuck you back in, ok?"
She gave no sign that she actually understood, but submitted to the alcohol and bandages readily enough, as long as he didn't touch what little clothing remained to her. True enough, he managed actually to pick her up and put her into the bed; she was surprisingly light. He pulled the blankets over her, tucked her in like a little child, and brushed her hair back from her face. "There you go... all better now."
To his credit, he actually had intended to go back into the other room. But her eyes opened again, and she stared at him with the same disturbing intensity that had trapped him earlier. They were a winterscape, and worse, a winterscape filled with pain and sorrow like he'd never seen live and in person, though he absently noted that she looked a great deal like modern-day genocide victims. Her throat worked as she tried to speak.
"No, no... don't talk, not right now," he made hurried, shushing motions. "You talk any more and you'll hurt yourself worse than..." He shut up, since she'd actually managed to make more than a hoarse gasp.
"Meh... meh...." She swallowed hoarsely, and he darted out, refilled the glass with water, and handed it to her again, this time being careful not to look at her eyes. She gulped this down, stared at him again. "Merci," she said, more clearly this time. "Thank... you."
Then, as if those three words had exhausted her, she dropped back onto the pillows and slept. Doyle sat there, empty glass dangling from his fingers, and watched her for what seemed like a very long time. After a while, silent tears began to trickle down her cheeks, but she did not wake.

"What happened?" Angel's whisper was almost as insistent as a shout, or at least it seemed so to Doyle, who woke up at about the same time he realized he'd fallen asleep.
"What happened... oh, the bandages," he picked up the remainder of them (and few enough remained, after all the wounds she'd taken) and the wrappers and the empty bottle of alcohol. "I checked up on her, and she was hurt, so I patched her up, like. Gave her some water too, she was real dehydrated."
Angel nodded slowly, staring at the girl in the bed. "Good... very good. Good work," he clapped Doyle on the back in a gesture that was almost a blunt dismissal, and led the way out of the room. Doyle fought down the urge to tell Angel where to go, then wondered at himself for being so taken with the girl. I gotta get my head examined, he concluded, and followed the vampire out.
"Well, I got her some clothes that'll probably do more for her than that... whatever... she was wearing," Cordelia announced. "How's she doing."
Doyle tersely related what he'd found. Angel blinked, and actually seemed to pay attention to him this time, as Cordelia's eyes got wider and wider. "Oh YUCK..." was all she had to say, but it was enough, in Cordie-speak. Angel just got very quiet, and very still. "I'll call Kate," was all he said when he was finished, but both Cordelia and Doyle could see his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Cordelia looked from one to the other, and Doyle realized he'd clenched his own hands into fists, and sheepishly attempted to relax.
"Look, what if the guys who ... beat her up," Even Cordelia (perhaps especially Cordelia) didn't want to talk about what had happened to the girl, "What if they come looking for her?"
"Then we'll send them packing." Angel said grimly as he called Kate, "I don't think they'll be able to track us here, though. We didn't leave anything that could be traced to us... Hi, Kate? It's Angel."
Cordelia took that as their cue to get out of the room and give Angel some quiet. Besides, she wanted to find out what had happened from Doyle, and said as much.
"Well, I figured I'd get a better look at her, see where all the blood came from... she'd been beaten with something, tied down probably too, she's got rope burns..." Doyle stared into the room where the woman in question slept, to Cordelia's faint annoyance, "I pulled back the sheets to see if she'd been beaten anywhere else, and... well, I think you can guess the rest."
Now it was Cordelia's turn to become very tense, but she wrapped her arms around herself and hugged herself tightly instead. "God.. what makes people do things like that? I mean, ordinary people, not monsters or vampires or demons or anything." She didn't notice Doyle wincing at the 'demons' part.
"I don't know, Cordie," Doyle said honestly, yet again wanting to hug her but not really wanting to get shoved away, as he knew he would. Cordelia was independent to the point of being stubbornly, almost harmfully so. "I wish I did." He looked back at the girl again. "Some people would say that people who would do things like that are the monsters."
Cordelia didn't have anything to say to that, though if Doyle had looked back at her at that moment, he might have seen an interesting mix of emotions on her face: pity and concern for the girl, fear for herself that was shared by every woman who led any sort of a risky life, and jealousy of how much Doyle was staring at the girl.
"Kate's sending a female doctor over to check the girl out," Angel's voice broke the tension. Cordelia almost jumped a bit, and Doyle jerked his gaze from the girl almost guiltily. "Has she woken up at all?"
"Not since earlier," Doyle wrestled with telling them what she had said, then decided to edit it a bit. "She said something in French, but I couldn't understand it. And she had a hard time just getting that out, she really screamed herself hoarse."
Angel nodded slowly, "That's fine, I speak French..." and moved into the room.
"Hey man, I'm not sure that's such a good idea," Doyle protested, but Cordelia, of all people, grabbed his arm and held him back.
"Let him do his work already, jeez," Just 24 hours ago, Doyle would have given his right arm to hear the jealousy that was now evident in the young woman's voice. But not now. Things had changed. He glared sullenly at Angel's back instead, then went into the office to wait. In the other room, they heard scrambling and a thump, and then Angel speaking in a soft tone in French. The scrambling noises stopped, and then they heard the young woman's rasping voice speaking slowly, as if she had to concentrate on each word to get it out. Doyle and Cordelia exchanged a worried glance. Demons they could deal with, vampires they could stake, even ghosts could be exorcised, or at least made friends with, as Cordelia had demonstrated. But comforting victims of gang-rape was beyond all of their experiences.
Finally, the uncomfortable moment was broken by the knocking on the door, the doctor. Doyle and Cordelia went upstairs to let her in, and were soon joined by a disgruntled Angel, who'd been summarily kicked out with a parting "I need to be alone with my patient."
After perhaps an hour, the doctor came back out again, looking grim. "You want the entire list, or shall I just describe what I think happened to her?"
"Both," chorused Doyle and Angel. "List first," Angel added.
"All right," the doctor nodded, "Multiple abraded wounds on her back, probably from a belt or a rope or both, I found a few fibers in the welts. Cuts on her shoulders, probably from the belt buckle. Second degree rope burns on her wrists, two broken fingers. Bruising on her arms, breasts, some on her stomach, there's a possibility of internal injuries there, but from the way you say she was moving earlier it's not as likely. Bruising on her thighs, some tearing in the vaginal area. More abraded wounds on her legs and buttocks, probably from the same rope. Second degree rope burns on her ankles," Doyle swore at himself for missing those. "I don't think there's much more that I can tell you about what happened to her, I think you've already guessed that she'd been tied down, beaten, and raped multiple times, quite possibly by multiple men or women."
"Women?!" All three chorused. The doctor nodded solemnly.
"It's not very common, but it's been known to happen. Do you really want to know how?" she added dryly, then "I thought not," as everyone shook their head violently. "You've already reported this to the police, I presume, since they're the ones who called me. I'm afraid I have some bad news for you though: there isn't much they can do about this unless she presses charges, and she doesn't look like she's in much condition to do that."
"What do you mean there's nothing they can do?" Doyle was outraged, "It's obvious she's been raped, can't you just go out and find the bastards and..." he was dragged a few steps away by Angel.
"Yeah," Cordelia took up the cry, "I mean, why does she have to press charges? Can't you guys just..."
"Hey, I'm not a cop, I feel the same way you guys do. But the reasons they always give me are sound... she's really the only one who was a witness to the crime besides the guys who did it. That's the problem with rape cases, it's almost always his word against hers. And unfortunately, in today's society, it's still even odds on who the jury believes. Hell, 90% of rapes go unreported anyway." The doctor looked as angry as they did about her inability to do anything about the statistics. "If I were you, though," she continued as she packed up her things, "I'd try to get her to talk about her friends. Most rapists are people the victim knows, and used to trust."
"That's...." Doyle couldn't speak anymore.
"Monstrous," Cordelia finished for them. Angel and the doctor nodded.
"Exactly," she said, and left. They all stood there for another several minutes, staring at each other helplessly.
"Now what?" Cordelia finally said.
"Legwork," Angel decided. "I'll talk to Kate again, see what I can find out about the laws on rape and what we can do about this. Doyle, you go check out the alley where we found her, see who saw anything. Cordelia... talk to Rape Crisis centers, see what we can do to help her."
"Not to be insensitive or anything," Cordelia said as Doyle began to sprint out the door, "But shouldn't we just take her there? I mean, this isn't exactly our specialty."
"She's not exactly their specialty either," Angel said grimly. "When she was trying to get away... well, she nearly did. If she'd been at her full strength, she might actually have gotten away, she nearly threw me into a wall about five times. And if she throws another fit at the Crisis center, she'll throw a lot more people into walls, people who that would hurt a lot more than it would hurt me."
Doyle and Cordelia stared at him, then in the direction of the young woman. "Right." Doyle said slowly. Cordelia nodded. "Let's go, then."

Two hours and lots of bus money later, Doyle had sourly decided that when it came to crime, no one saw anything, ever, and half of Los Angeles was scum. Cordelia learned more details than she really wanted to know about date-rape, gang-rape, and rape in general, and had decided to swear off intimacy with men for life. Angel was sick at heart and increasingly bitter at the powerlessness of the cops to do anything whatsoever about the girl. None of them had anything of substance relating to her, specifically, to report. They all met at a fast food place for a very quiet and subdued lunch and then made their way home without more than 10 words being spoken. As they all trooped into the office, though, they heard a semi-audible thump, as of furniture being knocked over.
"What the..." Angel wondered aloud, and headed into the bedroom where they'd left the girl sleeping.
"Christ almighty!" That was from Doyle, who'd followed. Angel hadn't wasted time on speaking, simply rushed to the wall to find some bladed thing with which to cut the rope the girl had hung herself on. Doyle spun around in place a couple times, then was shoved out of the way of Angel, who stormed back wielding a small axe. He swung, the rope was cut, and the girl sank to the floor. Doyle managed to keep her from landing too hard, but all three of them had already seen; she'd stopped breathing.
"Oh my God..." Cordelia was repeating, "Oh my God..."
"Doyle, you breathe for her... start CPR..."
"Why can't you?!" Doyle yelped.
"I don't breathe, I can't breathe for her. Come on, man, don't tell me you don't know CPR." Angel was starting to sound panicked as well.
"I don't know.. I think I remember..." Angel was already down on the ground next to her, pressing both hands over her chest and pumping, trying to start her lungs and heart again.
"One one-thousand, Two one-thousand..." Doyle blinked, remembered, and crouched down beside her and opened her mouth. "Five one-thousand, breathe." Doyle placed his mouth over hers, breathed for her. Cordelia paced a few steps beyond them, worrying. "One one-thousand, Two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five one-thousand, breathe." Doyle breathed again. No response. "Come on, dammit," Angel muttered.
"Cordie, call the paramedics," Doyle told her, then breathed for the girl again. Cordelia nodded, glad finally to be of some use, and ran for the phone. Doyle breathed. "BREATHE, dammit," he snapped. Angel kept compressing. Doyle kept breathing. Cordelia was nearly shouting incoherently on the phone. Minutes stretched out. Angel gave up.
"She's gone, Doyle, we can't do anything for her."
"Like," Doyle began pounding her chest, more than Angel had been, "HELL," he breathed for her, "We can't," he finished, breathed again.
"Doyle, it's been..." Cordelia walked back into the room. "The paramedics will be here as soon as they can...." "Five minutes."
"Shut UP!" Doyle nearly screamed. He was trying to think. His throat hurt from screaming. Screaming... he began to massage her throat as he compressed her chest with the other hand. Then, finally, on the next breath, she choked against his mouth. Angel and Cordelia stared wide-eyed. "Her throat... I think it had swollen shut." He sat back, stared at the girl. "Cordie, call the paramedics, tell 'em we got it covered?" She nodded, ran to the phone again, and spent several minutes obviously arguing with someone on the other end of the line.
Angel and Doyle stared at each other helplessly for some long minutes. "Well.. we'd better get her back into bed," Angel said finally. Doyle nodded, Angel scooped her up and they tucked her back in. She wriggled away from them, once she was in the bed, curling up into a fetal position and rasping something in French. Even Angel couldn't make it out, she'd done so much damage to her throat and vocal cords.
"We'd better set a watch on her," Angel said finally, once she'd not so much fallen asleep as passed out from sheer exhaustion. "Call the doctor back, make sure she didn't hurt her throat any more than it was... and then, I guess we just... take turns watching her."
Doyle nodded slowly, went to get the phone from Cordelia. Angel stood there, watching the girl as she slept. As before, once she was fully asleep, tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Angel reached out before he knew what he intended to brush the tears away, jumped back a bit guiltily as Cordelia walked up behind him.
"How's she doing?" For once, all the sarcasm was gone from her voice.
"She's sleeping, at least. I don't know what's going to happen, though. We're going to take turns watching her," he looked at Cordelia to make sure she wouldn't object, but she just nodded.
"I can't imagine... I don't know, living with that," she said after a short silence. "I mean, what do you do, what do you think, after..."
Angel looked distinctly uncomfortable. Many ages ago, when he hadn't had a soul, he had perpetrated many crimes similar to this. However, he'd never really been on the receiving end. He had no idea what one said to this kind of thing. "I don't know..." he said finally.
Doyle wandered back in. "The doctor's on her way. She didn't sound too surprised." All three of them looked at each other, even more subdued now, if that was remotely possible. "I'll stand first watch, if no one minds." Angel and Cordelia just looked at each other and shrugged. Doyle went to grab a pillow from the living room, and settled down in a chair by the bed. Cordelia got her stuff and went home (it had been a long night), and Angel bedded down on the couch. Left to his own devices, Doyle stared at the girl, by now too dehydrated to cry in her sleep, and wondered just what it was that had driven her to this state.
As if the wondering had been a direct question, all of a sudden his head exploded. Or at least, that was what it felt like. Light flashed painfully bright in front of his eyes, and he saw what looked like twenty or thirty young men and women, ranged against another group of twenty or thirty young men and women. While one of them looked like a bunch of kids playing at being biker punks, he wouldn't have trusted the other group with his pocket change. In the first group of kids, he saw a familiar face: the girl. Then the light flashed again, and the one group had apparently decimated the other. Perhaps two or three of the first group were left standing, a few more were alive but down. The rest were unconscious or dead, he couldn't tell which. Another flash, and suddenly he was witness to the most gruesome scene of gang-rape he never wanted to see. He came out of the series of visions staggering, half-falling out of his chair, and making strangled noises that might have been quiet screams.
It was a miracle she'd survived, he realized, as he slowly picked himself up off the floor, a miracle she still had any reason left to her. He started to stumble back to the chair, reviewing all the details he could remember (or bear to remember) in his head to tell Angel when he woke up. A hand under his upper arm made him jump sideways, though, and completely forget about what he had been trying to remember.
"What the..." he turned and stared. Somehow, the young woman had gotten out of bed, over to his side of the room, and was now standing there, disheveled and in her underwear, tugging him towards... chair. The chair, stupid, he told himself. Not the bed. God, how can you think of bed at a time like this.
She touched a hand to his temples, gave him a questioning glance. "I'm ok," he said, guessing that that was what she wanted to ask. She nodded, let go of him, and went back to the bed and curled up in it, only her head sticking out of the blankets. From the way she curled back up so easily, she'd been watching him for a while. He wondered why he hadn't noticed. "Thanks," he said finally, though that seemed inadequate. To cover the awkward moment, he hunted around for a pencil and paper to write down what he'd seen.
"Damn!" he said suddenly, then turned abruptly as he watched her disappear into the covers like a jack-in-the-box in reverse. "No.. no, not you. I'm an idiot," he continued, grabbing up a notepad and pencil. "You can't talk, not with your throat like it is, but there's no reason you can't write."
She poked her head out of the blankets, stared at him for a long time. Though he'd sworn not to look at her eyes anymore, he did yet again, and once again was swallowed up by their blue-white depths. Then she blinked, and the spell was broken. "Um... here," he all but thrust the notepad and pencil at her. She looked at him inquisitively. "Well... write?"
She made 'go on' gestures at him. "Oh..." he felt foolish. He hadn't told her what he wanted to know, or what to talk about. "Umm.. well, how about your name? I mean, we can't just go around calling you 'girl' or 'babydoll' or ..." he stammered, and stopped, blushing.
She smiled. She actually smiled. It was a shaky smile, like she was out of practice, but she smiled, and touched his cheek. Doyle blinked, was caught in her eyes yet again, but this time less so, for she seemed not to notice his discomfort and instead wrote in careful script on the paper, "Chantal St. Croix."
"And where are you from?"
"Montreal. I moved here about a year ago."
"With your parents?"
"With part of my pack... we banded with a local pack..." her hand was starting to shake, and Doyle watched her nervously, "And became... one of the more prominent packs in the LA area.." she was gasping now, her handwriting going all over the page. Suddenly, her hand clenched, she snapped the pencil, and curled over into a shuddering ball, crying soundlessly, with only a few tears.
"Ah hell..." Doyle had absolutely no idea what to do in this situation. He'd read somewhere that rape victims tended to be shy around men, but she'd let him clean her up without a problem until he'd touched her clothing. He knew he should get her something to drink, but she'd already tried to kill herself once, and he was afraid of what might happen while he was out of the room. After some agonizing moments of indecision, he finally went over and sat by the bed and hugged her awkwardly. She didn't seem to notice, which was both disheartening and comforting, but she did cry herself out, eventually curling up into his arms and hiccoughing slightly.
Doyle was becoming increasingly nervous at the situation; as if she'd sensed it, the young woman drew back gently to sit on the opposite side of the bed. "I'll get you some water..." he said, and skittered out of the room.
"Oh damn... damn damn damn..." he muttered imprecations at himself as he quickly refilled the glass and scrambled back to the bedroom. She hadn't moved, fortunately, but she also seemed to be back to staring at nothing. "Here..." he held out the glass to her, almost fearfully, "Drink this... you'll feel better." She didn't move, and he pressed the glass into her hands again. This time she did take it, and as her fingers brushed over the backs of his hands while she did so, he shivered, little electric sparks running up and down his arms. He looked away, anywhere but at her, trying to conceal his discomfort at being around her.
He looked back when Chantal began to choke on the water. Swearing softly, he once again began to massage her throat ever so gently with his fingers. She swallowed convulsively, managed to gulp down the rest of the water. "Ah hells... you can't even eat with your throat like that."
She seemed to regain a bit of herself, shook her head slowly, and, bizarrely, began to cry again. This was really starting to upset Doyle; he hadn't the slightest idea what to do about crying women that didn't involve some form of hitting on them, which just seemed vastly inappropriate in this situation. He settled for putting an arm around her shoulders and hugging her that way. "Hey, now... whatever's wrong, we can help. Really, we can."
She nearly threw his arm off at that, snatched up the pencil and paper, and scribbled something down. Then she threw the notepad at him and dived back underneath the covers. Doyle stared at her, then picked up the notepad and stared at it. "Ah hells."
"Then why didn't you let me die?" it read.
She was crying again. She was crying as fast as he could get her water. He sighed, got a whole pitcher this time (Foresight, Doyle, foresight), and sat by her, helplessly watching her weep into the pillows and hating himself for not knowing what to do about it.

"What the hell happened?" Angel said, after he'd gotten a good look at Doyle's face. Doyle himself looked like someone who'd just come out of the wars. He silently showed Angel the notepad. Angel's response was about as succinct as Doyle's. "Damn."
"Why does she want to die so much?" Cordelia asked softly, glancing at the figure huddled in the bed. "I mean... I don't think most people react like this... or...." She fell back into silence.
"I don't know..." Angel said, shrugging helplessly and staring openly. "I don't even know..."
"What she is. Let alone how to help her." The lady doctor was standing in the doorway, with another man who also appeared to be a doctor. "Sorry... the door was open so we let ourselves in. You have Chantal?"
Angel and Cordelia exchanged a confused glance, then turned the look to Doyle when he nodded. "Yes."
"May we see her?"
Angel nodded slowly. "Right this way," he said, and led the doctors to the room. "We'll talk," was all he said to Doyle, but the look he gave the man wasn't friendly.
The two doctors bent over the sleeping woman, consulting each other in whispers. Then, the male doctor lifted a hand to her face, slid it down the length of her jawline, and gently pinched her underneath her chin. Doyle, Angel, and Cordelia watched in utter confusion. Chantal's eyes snapped open.
"Easy, Chantal. It's only me." He repeated the gesture, this time somehow managing to duck down so that her head was above his. The lady doctor backed away, looking a bit less puzzled than the other three but no less uncomfortable.
"From what I've been told," she said to them in low tones, "Miss St. Croix is a werewolf... Don't ask me how it happened, I don't know. But what he's doing now... it's reasonable enough, I suppose, it's a form of submissive greeting from one wolf to another who is more dominant in the pack." She looked back to the two of them, and frowned "And that's not a good sign."
Chantal was ducking her head and trying to abase herself before the doctor.. or at least, that was what it seemed like. This was almost more difficult to believe than the doctor doing much the same thing a few minutes earlier. Now, they all stared openly. "It's not a... what?" Angel said eloquently.
"She used to... keep in mind I'm getting all this from Dr. Carter, who used to be the primary care physician to the whole pack... she used to be the alpha female of the pack. Now... she's acting like she's lower than someone who isn't even pack. That's a bad sign."
Angel nodded slowly, Doyle was starting to get it, but Cordelia just looked confused. "What...?"
"Cordie, think of it like you were in high school, and leading the fashion in the place, right?" Doyle explained to her dryly. "Then something happens that messes with your head so much you feel like you have to kiss up to the nerds and the geeks. That's what she's doing."
"Ohhh..." This explanation was sufficient for her. "But... why?"
"I wish I knew," Angel murmured, staring at the by-play. The doctor appeared to have convinced Chantal of her dominance, but how long it would stay that way was also evidently anyone's guess. He was examining her now, a bit more thoroughly than the lady doctor, but no more invasive than she had been. Chantal also seemed calmer now, to everyone's relief. After a few more minutes, the doctor shooed everyone out, and they all mingled in the hallway worriedly.
"You guys seemed to take it pretty calmly." The lady doctor suddenly looked at each of them in turn with a moderately suspicious look. Cordelia stepped in almost immediately, as Doyle and Angel exchanged a panicked glance.
"Well, we figured, her being... attacked..." she barely paused around the word, "Was more important than her being a werewolf, so..."
The lady doctor smiled slightly at that. "You have a generous nature," she looked around as Doyle neatly smothered a snicker and Angel made an odd face. Cordelia just smiled as disingenuously as she could manage.
"Is she going to be ok?" She asked after a bit. The lady doctor stared at the closed door and shrugged tiredly.
"I don't know. It's always hard to tell, and it varies a lot from woman to woman. Some women never let it get them down, they just pick themselves back up and keep on going, tough and cynical and they don't trust often, but... Others, a thing like this could completely break them. I've never met Miss St. Croix before, so I can't say how she'll deal with this. You'd be better off asking Dr. Carter about that one."
They all nodded slowly, then looked up as the doctor in question re-entered the room. "Well?" they all chorused, moderately impatiently. The doctor sighed. "It doesn't look too well. And there are dimensions to this you don't even know about. I really think it's best if you let me send her back to Montreal. Her sister could take better care of her..."
Angel shook his head vehemently. "No... we can help her, even if she is a werewolf. We've dealt with... strange things before, we can help her."
"Besides, that's sort of what we do," Cordelia chimed in, ignoring Angel's warning stare. "Angel Investigations, we help the hopeless!" The brightness in her voice faltered at the skeptical looks of both doctors, the incredulous how-can-you-do-that look of Doyle, and the warning now-glare of Angel. "Besides, we found her. We were already looking into this when.. I mean... can't we at least try?"
Dr. Carter glanced past them at the now-sleeping Chantal. "I suppose it can't hurt," he said dubiously, with a look at all three of them that said if it did, he would make sure it hurt them as well. "All right then... She came down from Montreal with a few of her pack... you see, her sister was alpha female there and.... Well, how much do you know about real wolves?"
"They travel in packs, led by an alpha male and an alpha female... and a beta male and female, too. The alpha male and female are chosen by fighting through the pack, and by who can get the biggest prey..." Angel rattled this off like trivia, and the doctor nodded slowly.
"You've studied. Good. There's more than one kind of werewolf, but hers and her packmates, they come from the kind that is naturally like that, not the kind that gets bit. The kind that gets bit is wolf only at night during the full moon. Her and hers.. well, they were never really human to begin with.
The alpha female of her other pack was her sister and the alpha male was her brother-in-law. After a while, it got too crowded up there, so her and a few of her friends came down here. She managed to fight her way up through the ranks, and earned the respect of the alpha male, so she became the alpha female. Up until recently, that is." He sighed.
"A new alpha male came into town with his pack. They'd come from San Diego, but apparently been kicked out by their previous pack. They tried to join Chantal and Andy's pack, but they didn't make it, none of the original pack like... liked them. My guess would be, they tried and succeeded in a hostile takeover." Now he looked them all in the eyes, and Angel had a sinking feeling he knew what came next. "Chantal's pack was slaughtered. All four of the leaders, the two alphas and the two betas, were kept alive to be tortured to death. Chantal went comatose, and they all thought she was dead, so they dumped her in the alley where you found her. Presumably, the other three are also dead. There may be some pack members left running around the city, she wasn't too clear on how many were actually dead, but if so, they're going to keep their heads very far down right now."
"And the other pack did that to her," Doyle said calmly, but everyone (including Doyle) was startled at the pure anger in his voice.
Dr. Carter either didn't hear it or ignored it. "Yes. It's not exactly common practice, usually the usurping pack runs the other one out of town... but it's not unheard of, either."
"So what happens to her now? Will the other pack just ignore her, or..." Angel wanted to know.
"They think she's dead, remember? They probably won't think about her unless she shows up again."
"Well, that shouldn't be too hard," Cordelia said, "Dye her hair, get her some contacts and new clothes..." The doctor was shaking his head. "What?"
"It's not that simple. They're not human, remember? They'll know her scent, and some mannerisms that stick out among humans. And.. well. That's why I said she would be better off leaving town." All three of them shook their heads vehemently. The doctor shrugged. "Suit yourselves. I'm local, so you can call me if you need me," he handed Angel a business card, and left without another word. The other doctor gave them a wryly sympathetic look and left as well.
"So... now what?" Doyle said, after a long silence.
"Now.. well, we keep an eye on her. And when she wakes up, then we talk to her. You two might as well go home, though, I can handle things here till she wakes up. I'll call you as soon as she does," he added, since Doyle seemed to be about to protest. Finally, the man nodded.
"As soon as she wakes up, remember," Doyle called over his shoulder. Cordelia tugged him out of the house, and then Angel was left alone with the mysterious Chantal St. Croix. He went into the room, stared down at her, wondering what set of circumstances had brought her to this pass.... Oh, granted, he knew the basic outline of the situation that the doctor had spoken of, but... he wanted to know so much more. Almost too much; he blinked a bit as he realized what he was thinking. There was something about this girl, something odd. He wasn't sure he liked it. Taking one last look around the room to make sure she wouldn't or couldn't hurt herself, he went into the living room and bedded down on the couch.

Screams dragged Angel out of his sound sleep, his game face on and in a low fighting stance. Then he realized the screams were coming from the bedroom, and darted in there. Chantal was writhing around in the bed, nearly strangling herself in the sheets in her effort to escape whatever was haunting her. "Whoa, whoa..." he grabbed her arms, was thrown off, and tried to grab her again. "Whoa, whoa, whoa... easy. Take it easy." Actually having a physical opponent to fight seemed to shake her out of her dream. "Take it easy. You're safe now." She went limp, and for a second Angel wondered if she'd gone unconscious, till he looked at her eyes. Pure color, white-blue like a husky, they were, and he was trapped. "You're perfectly safe..." he trailed off quietly, staring at her like she was a thing of beauty the likes of which he'd never seen before.
"Safe," she rasped out, and her voice was so harsh it broke the spell. "Safe as houses." She turned away from him, stared at the opposite wall.
"Dis-moi ce qui passe?" Angel ventured to ask, after some long moments. She just laughed softly.
"Don't bother," she rasped again. This time he could actually make out her accent. "That's Parisian French. And your accent is so thick as to be unintelligible anyway."
Angel drew back, a bit stung, and for a moment he thought that was all he was going to get out of her. After a few minutes, though, she slid out of the bed and padded over to the wall in bare feet, staring off into the distance like the wall wasn't even there. Angel found it hard to look at her in her mostly naked state, but she didn't seem to be aware of it.
"We weren't a truly mated pair, Andy and I, but we respected each other, and cared for each other at least as much as we cared for anyone else in the pack. Danielle and Michel, now they were a truly mated pair.. our betas. We were one of the strongest packs in LA." She shut up, went back to the bed and curled up in it. "I'll go back to the loft tomorrow. You needn't keep me here any longer than that," she said, and promptly went to sleep.
Angel sat up for a while longer, though, staring at her as though he hadn't the faintest idea what to do with her. She was both strong-willed and completely helpless by turns, and Angel at the best of times wasn't sure what to do with helpless women in his home. Especially not rape victims, and that made him really uncomfortable. How was he supposed to help someone who by all rights should hate all members of his sex on sight now? Cordelia, for all that she meant well, was evidently not going to be much help. The thought of Doyle being any help in this situation beyond what an extra pair of hands, legs, and eyes could provide, was laughable. The doctor had wanted to take her to Montreal, and now that he wasn't there to be so.. confrontational, Angel could see his point. He really didn't have the faintest idea of what to do with her.
Fact: Her name was Chantal St. Croix, she had a sister in Montreal, and both were werewolves. Fact: She moved down from Montreal a year ago and joined the local werewolf pack, becoming their alpha in a fairly short time. Fact: Her new pack was now all killed, by the rival pack... no. Angel sat up suddenly in his chair as he realized it. The entire pack wasn't all killed. Or at least, not necessarily. She'd said it herself, she didn't know who had survived the initial attack besides the four leaders. City records, that was what was needed. He locked the door to the bedroom, after first making sure there wasn't anything there that she could hurt herself with, and then went out to the library to look through city records.
Chantal, Chantal... Chantal St. Croix, lived at 1041 Madison Boulevard. She'd mentioned she lived in a loft apartment... he checked who else lived there. Twenty four other names popped up. Andy Maltheus, Michel Deveraux, Danielle Malefant, Kevin Hackwell, Alison Harding, Heather Wiltshire, Liselle LeBeau... the list went on. At a hunch, he scribbled down all the names, then checked in the recent records of the coroners office. Sure enough, most of them matched up as recently deceased. Three didn't, of the three, one of the names he recognized as another leader, the beta male. That left two. Jackpot. Angel smiled slightly. With any luck, he would be able to find them, and reuniting her with her pack members might help Chantal, at least somewhat. The two surviving members were Liselle LeBeau and someone named Star. They'd been admitted to Our Lady of Mercy Hospital about three hours before Angel and the others had found Chantal.
Angel checked his watch; it was still early. Time enough to go to the hospital and check up on the other two. As he drove there, he wondered what their reaction would be to discovering that their pack alpha was still alive. Angel realized suddenly that he had no idea what werewolf society was like, and began to have second thoughts about the whole thing. Too late now, though.
"I'm a private investigator, I was hired by a friend of Miss LeBeau's and Star's to ascertain their whereabouts," Big words, hopefully should make him sound official, "and report back to her if they were..." Damn, 'in good condition' made them sound like a car or a computer, 'well' didn't sound official enough. "Alive and well, she hasn't heard from them in over 24 hours now, but did not wish to involve the police. May I see them?"
"I'm sorry, visiting hours are over..."
"This is something of an emergency, you see, she and her friends had received death threats of a rather insidious nature, and she would simply like to know that they are all right..." Angel smiled with what he hoped was winning charm at the nurse. It must have worked, because she sighed and picked up a patient registry clipboard.
"I suppose it can't do any harm.. just see them, mind, a few minutes only. They're in 14B."
Angel smiled. "Thank you very much, ma'am."
He walked down the halls, wondering absently how many times he'd been in a hospital to snitch blood, and how many times he'd been in the hospital visiting Buffy or Willow or another one of the gang. He very quickly shied away from the memory of the time he himself had put most of the gang in the hospital. Fortunately the room was close enough to spare him any deep thinking on the subject. He knocked on the door and then, when there was no response, quietly swung it open partway.
A slight blonde girl lay on one bed, arm in a cast, leg in a brace, big puffy bruises around one eye, sleeping with similar fitfulness to Chantal. She didn't look too badly off at the moment, and Angel checked her chart. Compound fracture in her arm, at least a twisted ankle (they still had to do x-rays on her leg), some head trauma, bruising all over her chest and ribcage, no internal damage, no signs of rape. Angel kept back a snarl; apparently that was an indignity they saved for the pack leaders. He turned towards the other one, who he presumed was the mysterious Star.
Star, to Angel's mild surprise, turned out to be a male. Then again, he thought wryly to himself, what kind of a name is Angel anyway. Star had a similar style of injuries to Liselle: grave, but nowhere near as traumatizing as what Chantal had received at the hands of the other pack. He started to read Star's chart.
"Who are you?" A voice, weak but astonishingly clear and authoritative, called from the other side of the room. He turned, to find that Liselle had indeed woken, or had been awake the entire time. Turning back, he saw that Star, too, was awake.
"My name is Angel... I'm here on behalf of your... pack alpha, Chantal St. Croix."
"Chantal St. Croix is no alpha of mine," Liselle said, but she didn't look at him while she said it. "Nor mine," came from the opposite side of the room. Angel looked from one to the other in utter incomprehension.
"But... I thought she was your pack alpha female..."
"She was. She was defeated in combat by Eve. Eve is now our alpha female." Liselle spoke clearly, but without much hope and with what seemed to be divided conviction.
"Your alpha.... I thought Eve's pack slaughtered yours and took over the city."
"It was their right as the entering pack to do so. They acquitted themselves well, and they are now the ruling pack of the hunting grounds. That's an end to it." Star sounded angry; Angel wondered why.
"And what happens to Chantal now, are you just going to abandon her?"
"She lost the battle. She can petition for entry into the pack as a cub, or she can go elsewhere. It's up to her. We have nothing to do with it."
"You have everything to do with it!" Angel couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You're her packmates!"
"We were her packmates. Now we follow Eve and Mark. That is the way of things."
This time Angel did snarl, and walked out without another word. The other two werewolves didn't say anything either, but then, he hadn't really expected them to. Chantal wasn't going to like this... or perhaps she already knew it? Perhaps that was why she had tried to kill herself, out of the shame of living when her pack was decimated. Angel snarled again, unknowingly causing hapless pedestrians to cross to the other side of the street and clear his way. Dawn was almost here, he'd better call Doyle to take over watching the young woman. After that... he didn't know what he'd do.
The payphone he stopped at was occupied, fortunately by someone who fled when they saw him coming. He punched in Doyle's number with mild restraint, then took several deep breaths to calm himself before Doyle picked up with a sleepy "Hello?"
"Doyle, it's me. I need you to watch over Chantal for the day. And I found two more of her packmates."
"Hey, that's great, man, she'll be thrilled to hear that I'll bet."
"I don't think so," Angel cut him off, and quickly filled him in on the scene at the hospital.
"What the hell, man? They're her friends, they shouldn't be doing that to her."
"I know, I know. Just.. meet me at the apartment, ok? I need to get indoors."
"Yeah, sorry. I'll be there in a second."
Angel hung up without further words, and drove down to wait for Doyle. True to his word, Doyle was there quickly. And it was a good thing they were too, because as soon as they descended to the basement apartment, they heard loud THUMPs at what sounded like the bedroom door. Angel sprinted for the room in question, Doyle not far behind. Angel slammed open the door, but Doyle had seen what was happening; Chantal was slamming against the door, probably running full tilt. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but Angel had already opened the door and Chantal, not sensing the door about to be opened, had fallen on top of him.
In any other situation, Doyle would have laughed hysterically at the position the other two now found themselves in. In this situation, however, it was anything but funny. Chantal was growling, a sound that was extremely odd coming as it was from her already ravaged throat, and two octaves too deep for her sex. Angel was staring up at her in complete surprise. She spat down some words at him in French, then got up off of him with surprising grace.
"Don't. Lock me in. Again," she snarled, presumably what she had said before, but this time in English. Angel got to his feet, dusted himself off.
"We did it for your own safety," Angel said in a carefully neutral tone. He also managed to semi-obviously put himself in a position where he was lower than she was, having watched the doctor interact with the young woman. "We thought you might.. hurt yourself."
She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "And if I did, what business would that be of yours? I told you, I will return to my loft today. I won't impose any more on your hospitality."
"Hey, it's our business because believe it or not, we care about people..." Doyle burst in at this, faltered as she turned a look on him that said 'where did you come from', then continued with moderate abandon, "So... we found you, and clearly you needed help of some kind, and you still do, so..." This time he fell silent, realizing how much of a mess he was making of his words.
She just looked at him for a long moment, then looked at Angel. Both men were uncomfortably aware of her eyes on them, but neither of them wanted to move to consult each other, fearing to break the moment. Finally she turned, stared off into a corner at nothing in particular. "Where are my clothes?" she said, in that too-careful voice that most used when about to either cry or explode. Given previous incidents, neither Doyle nor Angel wanted to bet on which it would be.
"Your clothes were ruined... we... took the liberty of buying you new ones.." Angel handed her one of the many bags Cordelia had brought. She stared at it a bit as though she wasn't sure what it was, then her eyes cleared and she took the bag.
"Thank you," she said, and began to dress right there. Suddenly Doyle and Angel were both aware of how much she wasn't wearing, and politely looked away, Doyle with much blushing and nervousness. When the rustling of clothes and paper stopped, they turned back.
"Doyle will take you home, if that's really what you want," Angel volunteered, "I really don't think it's safe for you though, Mark and Eve will be looking for you..." He trailed off as several intense looks passed over her face, among them fury, grief, and guilt.
"It doesn't matter, now," she said quietly, and shrugged. Angel thought about asking her what she meant by that, but didn't quite dare to. Doyle just began loading himself down with the bags, deciding discretion to be the better part of valor. Chantal also picked up as many bags as her injuries would accommodate, visibly quelling winces as she slung them over her wounded back and shoulders. They packed her up into the car without any more words. Doyle and Angel looked at each other several times as though they would try to start a conversation, but Chantal's continual silence and withdrawal made it difficult.
It wasn't until they were in the car and driving to the mysterious loft apartment that she gave any indication that she registered Doyle's presence. She spoke, even if only briefly, to give him directions. Finally they were on the last stretch, and he took a few glances at her. She was staring out the window with that thousand yard stare she'd had on almost constantly since they found her. Doyle suddenly realized that she actually was quite beautiful, cleaned up and in the clothes Cordelia had picked out for her (no matter what else was said about Cordelia, she really did have the fashion sense she was so proud of ). Chantal stared up at the loft with a stricken look of alienation that was like a fist to Doyle's gut. He wondered if she was even aware of it.
"Hey..." he touched her arm gently, "You sure you want to do this?"
She blinked, looked at him like she'd forgotten his presence, then nodded. "Oui. Let's go," and she started over to the building.
He stared after her dubiously, but followed. She'd apparently retrieved her wallet and keys from her old tattered clothes, unlocked the door and entered the ground floor. Doyle wasn't sure what to expect; from the outside it looked like any other dilapidated warehouse building, with broken and dirty windows, old brick. Inside, however, was a hallway and a door, both painted in shades of institutional gray. He started down the hallway, stopped as he realized she wasn't following him, and looked back. She was opening the second door.
"What..." he started, then followed her in... and stopped, staring. Inside the inner walls was a beautifully appointed what looked like loft apartment, with a kitchen done in beautiful reddish wood and black tiling, a den with big beanbag chairs, a large TV, stereo system, game systems, and many cushion. Tall screens separated one corner of the room that appeared to be either a dance studio or a workout area. Light streamed in from that wall, that seemed to be made entirely of glass; Doyle supposed it came from the outside broken windows. Chantal had stopped in the middle of the room, and was looking around with a lost, hopeless stare. Doyle was about to go up to her, but then she seemed to collect herself, and walked up the stairs in one corner of the room to the second floor.
The second floor looked like nothing so much as a college dorm, except that the rooms were bigger than any dorm Doyle had ever seen or heard of. She walked down the hall to one that was furthest from what appeared to be a smaller lounge and kitchen, opened it, and walked in. Doyle followed, set down the bags on a chair, and turned to attempt an awkward farewell... and stopped, as he saw where she'd gone.
Chantal was standing in front of her dresser mirror, leaning heavily on it, head hanging down with her hair falling over her face, her shoulders shaking as she wept silently. Doyle's awkwardness increased tenfold. Tentatively, he took a step towards her, then another. He touched her shoulder, and she didn't respond. Finally, he gently turned her around, and held her close. She tensed up noticeably, and he started to back off, not wanting to get slammed into a wall. Then she relaxed, and her arms actually went around his waist as she tucked her head under his chin (she was tiny, he realized abruptly) and cried.
They stayed like that for a short while, Doyle slowly feeling less awkward about comforting someone he didn't even really know, Chantal slowly losing her trepidation over appearing weak in front of someone who wasn't even dominant to her. They stood there, and after a short while it became less uncomfortable and more relaxed. Doyle was almost sorry when she pulled back, wiped her eyes, regained some of her composure.
"Thank you... for everything. And tell the other one thank you as well. I am sorry for what happened," she said awkwardly. He got the feeling she didn't apologize to many people very often.
"Hey, it's ok..." Suddenly he was very reluctant to go. Apart from the sheer fact that she was a very lovely damsel in distress, and he was a male who had a tendency to flirt with most women, she seemed to him to be normally a very self-controlled, self-possessed young woman. People like that didn't break down in front of almost complete strangers without something being very wrong. "You know, we all need to... break down, sometimes."
She looked at him oddly. "I meant, for nearly breaking his door and falling on top of him."
"Oh..." he blinked a bit, then smiled sheepishly. She smiled back, and actually giggled despite herself. Doyle was struck once again by how young she seemed.
"You're right, though..." she turned away, stared at the wall again, then almost automatically began putting the new clothes away, "I'm not used to this. It is... hard, I suppose, for alphas or even betas to relax in front of inferiors." Doyle bristled a bit at that, calmed himself with the knowledge that she meant something different from what it sounded like, "Sometimes I think that's why packs are led by a pair of alphas, usually a mated pair. So that each one of them has someone to talk to."
Doyle had no idea what to say to that, and so said nothing. She didn't really seem to expect an answer anyway. After a while, she continued. "Andy and I weren't mated, but we got along. Sometimes more like brother and sister, I guess. He was always more mischievous than I was, which made for a good pack, I suppose. I took care of the serious matters, he kept morale high." She was staring at a picture of a young, dark blonde man now; he seemed to have just come out of a handspring and was grinning at the camera.
"That'd be Andy?"
Chantal nodded. "We were out at the park that day, just fooling around. He was playing Frisbee with a couple others, being silly at catching it in his teeth like a dog. I told him he was setting a bad example, he just laughed and told me to lighten up." She smiled slightly with the memory, seemed about to cry again, then remembered where she was and who was with her, and didn't.
Doyle may not have been the world's expert on psychiatry, but even he knew this was bad. "Tell me about him?" he asked. Chantal didn't really seem to have an answer to that, shrugged and walked out into the hallway. Puzzled, Doyle followed her.
"If we'd ever revealed ourselves to the world in general, he'd've been out there leading the mob," she said, opening a door a bit further down the hallway. "He always took the most risks of the bunch of us, and in a way he took the least. He'd come so close to revealing werewolves to the public, and always managed to make it seem like some tabloid feature." She smiled slightly with the memories, "It drove his previous alpha crazy... I think in some ways she was glad to give up her position."
"To you..." Doyle thought of something then, and it made him very uneasy. "Did you..."
"Kill her? No. A fight for dominance is only to the death when one or the other person fighting makes it so. Otherwise it's till first submission." She wrinkled her nose. "Humans are really the only ones who kill so often without reason to. Animals only kill for food, or out of self-preservation or for protection of territory."
"You ... you say that like you're not human," Doyle ventured. She turned and smiled slightly at him, but there wasn't anything happy in the smile.
"We're not."

"She seems to be okay," Doyle reported, having gotten little else out of her and returned to the offices. "At least on the outside. Inside, though... it's like she's stopped feeling anything long enough to do something. Damned if I know what, though," he shrugged wryly and flopped onto a chair.
"Well, maybe she has to get her pack back together, right? I mean, some of them had to survive, and there are probably other werewolves around..." Cordelia began.
"Not anymore," Angel said tersely, and gave a brief account of the exchange in the hospital. Cordelia blinked, her eyes opened wide, and she made indignant noises.
"Yeah, that's pretty much what I said," Doyle commented. Cordelia ignored him.
"Well... now what? I mean, she still needs help, that much is obvious..."
"But how.. yeah, I agree." Angel leaned on the edge of the desk and looked at the other two, who just looked back at him.
"Well... here, though, if she's stopped feeling long enough to do something, then that means she's not going to go kill herself.. and that's something, isn't it?" Doyle was reaching, a bit, but at that point all three of them needed the hope.
"Yeah, but the question is... what is it she's going to do?"
None of them really had an answer for Angel's question. None of them had had any more experience than the other with dealing with this sort of werewolf. Even Angel hadn't encountered them before; they were all on completely new territory, and when the matters were literally life and death, the ground seemed all that more uneven.
"The doctor!" Cordelia said suddenly, making the two men jump. "He's been dealing with her kind for ... ages. He'd know what she'd do." Angel looked at her like she'd sprouted a second head.
"Why didn't I think of that," he muttered as he went to call Dr. Carter. For once, Cordelia bit back her usual sarcastic commentary. "Hello? Dr. Carter? It's Angel... Chantal's friend?"
"Yes, I remember you. What seems to be the problem?"
"Well. Chantal's doing fine, except she insisted on going back to the loft. And she's acting oddly. She ... she doesn't cry anymore, and I know there's no reason to expect her to smile or laugh, but she doesn't do that either. Doyle said it looked like she was getting ready to do something... we thought you might have an idea of what that was."
Angel didn't think anyone could curse that creatively. He wasn't even sure what some of those words meant. "She's getting ready to exact vergelt."
"Vergelt?"
"It's a semi-archaic term. Basically, it means, payment for murder. Where is she now?"
"She's at the loft."
"I'll meet you there." The phone went dead.
"What is... DAMN." Angel swore, and Doyle and Cordelia looked at him with wide-eyed alarm. "She's going to go kill Mark and Eve, I think. The doctor said something about vergelt, payment for murder."
Doyle turned pale, and Cordelia blanched. "But how? She can't really do anything without hurting herself more."
"I don't think she cares about that anymore. Doyle, you know where the loft is?"
He nodded, "I can get us there," and sprinted for the car.
"You two go." Angel said quietly, not looking very happy about it.
"Aren't you.... Oh," Cordelia blinked as comprehension suddenly dawned. "Sunlight, flames. Right. What happens if she ... doesn't want to come with us?"
"Knock her out... or lock her in. Do something, just don't let her go after Mark and Eve alone. Don't let her get herself killed." Angel's eyes practically burned, something Cordelia didn't think she'd ever seen before. She turned around, and Doyle had such a look of sad jealousy in his eyes that Cordelia was beginning to wonder what it was about the girl that had gotten under both guys' skin. She sighed, decided to figure it out later, and left with Doyle. He drove like a mad fiend all the way to the loft.
"How long ago did you drop her off here?" were the first words out of the doctor's mouth.
"About... two hours ago," Doyle said, after a bit of thought.
"Then she's probably not left yet. She's big on the martial arts, she'll have warmed up a bit first and collected her weapons." The doctor took out a set of keys, the sight of which caused Doyle to breathe a hidden sigh of relief. He hadn't wanted to demonstrate his lockpicking skills so early in the game. They went through the outer doors, went through the inner doors, and then a bullet took out a chunk of the door frame above their heads and they all dived down behind the nearest piece of convenient furniture.
"I figured you were going to try to stop me." Her voice was soft and calm, yet carrying. "No one will stop me, not now. I failed once, I won't again."
"Chantal, you're weak, and you're not thinking clearly. You can extract vergelt later, once you've healed, but if you go out there now you're only going to get yourself killed." The doctor tried to reason with her, but she only laughed. Again, the laugh held no humor.
"Isn't that part of the point? The ideal here is that they die as I die, and then we are all paid for."
Doyle took a gamble. "What about Liselle and Star? What happens to them?"
"They're meat for anyone more dominant," she snarled, but it had the sound of more anger at herself than anger at anyone else. "I am no longer their alpha."
"Says who?" Doyle took an even bigger gamble, and stood up. God, if he survived this, he was demanding hazardous duty pay. "If you're going to act like an alpha, then ... dammit, act like an alpha..." he was heading into lame speech territory, but began to move towards her anyway, hoping desperately that she wasn't as trigger happy as she seemed. Another bullet whizzed by his head and embedded itself in the cabinet behind him. "Look, you're not going to prove anything this way, and you're probably going to get yourself killed before you get to kill anyone anyway."
"No!" She shouted it, but it didn't carry much conviction, and her voice was starting to degrade rapidly yet again. "I'm not..." her voice failed her, and she made rasping, choking noises, angry and helpless. Doyle began to run to the stairs, but another bullet took out a chunk of the floor by his feet, and he gave a very undignified yelp and leapt to the side. Her voice degenerated even further, or so he thought, till Cordelia's gasp made him look up to the stairs again.
"Holy...." Muscles were rippling under her clothing where muscles had no right to be. Her face was strange and distorted, her hair shrinking into her head. Bizarrely, her eyes stayed the same, though her skin was beginning to have mottled patches of what looked like gray fur. Then, abruptly, she gave a startled, hoarse yelp, and collapsed on the stairs where she stood. Doyle, Cordelia, and the doctor ran to her side, though Doyle managed to get there first and scooped her awkwardly up into his arms.
"Don't do that," the doctor said irritably, and took her from the other man, draping her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. "Get the gun," he said as he took her down the stairs. Doyle blinked after him in bewilderment and bemused irritation. Finally it was Cordelia who got the gun with a sigh, Doyle having already gone to hover by the couch the doctor laid Chantal on.
"And don't do that either," the doctor snapped, "Whatever you're thinking, it's not that."
Cordelia and Doyle blinked at him now. "Not what?"
"Not whatever it is you're feeling for her." The doctor sighed, straightened a bit and looked at them both. "You've heard of the phrase 'animal magnetism'?" They both nodded. "In the werewolves case, it's more than a phrase. They secrete a pheromone that causes people to like them, to the point of being attracted to them. It varies, depending on the werewolf and the amount of time they spend in contact with non-weres." Now he turned and stared very much at Doyle alone, "Let me guess, you wanted to hug her, comfort her, make it all better, and thought you might be falling in love with her? You weren't." Cordelia snickered a bit. "Normally she would have noticed and compensated for it, but ... well, circumstances have been anything but normal, lately." He sighed, and seemed to deflate as he said this. Then he had his hands full holding down an angry werewolf, as Chantal abruptly woke and lunged for the edge of the couch.
"Don't even think about trying to shift again," the doctor told her sharply, "You're already exhausted, much more and you'll go into a coma."
She stopped struggling, but glared at him, at Cordelia, who shrank back, and at Doyle, who looked thoroughly miserable. She spat out something in French, to which the doctor merely nodded, and took her pulse. "You might want to get those bandages changed too, before your wounds go septic." He looked up at the other two; Doyle and Cordelia scrambled for the medicine cabinets, leaving the doctor and the werewolf to talk quietly amongst themselves.
"You thought you were in love with her?" Cordelia said, once they were out of earshot. Again, under other circumstances Doyle would have been thrilled to hear the undertone of jealousy in her voice. As things stood now, he was just feeling like ten kinds of a fool.
"Yeah, well. You heard the doctor. Some kind of pheromonal thing." Doyle managed to get it all out of his head long enough to remember where the medicine closet actually was, and led Cordelia there. "Here... alcohol, bandages.. medical tape..."
"Yuck," was all Cordelia had to say. In a peculiar way, it was reassuring; she was being the same old Cordelia without making an issue of his ... transgressions. He smiled slightly at that, and touched her lightly on the shoulder as he passed her on their way to the living room.
"Thanks."
She made a face at him, but nodded ever so slightly; she knew what he meant. They returned to the living room to find Chantal staring out the big wall-window and the doctor speaking to her in low tones, something he broke off in mid-sentence as they returned with the supplies. Without a word in reply, Chantal went and knelt down, Eastern style, on a small cushion that was apparently there for just that purpose. The doctor calmly stripped her completely topless and began to peel off the gauze. Chantal didn't flinch, but Doyle and Cordelia both looked away at the amount of flesh that was revealed.
"Alcohol," was all the doctor said. Doyle awkwardly handed back the bottle of the stuff. "Antiseptic. Gauze. Tape." It seemed to take forever as he taped her up, then finally he handed her back her shirt to put on, and gestured at her for the rest. Doyle made a choked noise, and ducked back behind the screens with a muttered, "Sorry."
Cordelia muttered. "Yeah, it's not like you didn't want to see ... that much of her before," but there wasn't much heat behind it. Chantal and the doctor both ignored her anyway. She sighed, then thought of something. "Um... how long will she ... do that?"
"Do what?"
"That... thing. With the pheromones?" Cordelia groped for the right words.
"Oh... depends on how long it takes for her to get to know you.. usually it goes away after a week. It's supposed to be a survival mechanism, so it doesn't last very long." He finished taping her up, and stood. "Chantal... Chantal!" She turned around and glared at the doctor. "Don't do that again," he told her. She shrugged, stood, and turned to stare out the window-wall. The doctor sighed, and he and Cordelia joined Doyle on the other side of the screen.
"She probably won't listen to me," the doctor said ruefully, "Even if she weren't pack alpha, she wouldn't listen to me when she gets in one of these moods. Still..." he looked back at the young woman in question, "You might want to keep an eye on her still. I don't like the looks of the mood she's in... if she goes after revenge, she won't care whether she lives or dies." He shrugged, and moved to the door. "Either way, up to you. I'm going to be out of town for a while; I don't know how well it was known that I was the pack doctor for the previous pack, and I don't really want to be pack doctor for Mark and Eve's pack."
"Not that I blame you, but what do we do if we need you?" Doyle asked, also keeping an eye on the young woman.
"That's my cell phone number, you'll still be able to reach me. If you give it out to anyone, though, even if they say they're a friend of Chantal's..." he gave both of them a look he must have learned from the werewolves, because both Doyle and Cordelia shrank back in sudden trepidation, both thoroughly intimidated. The doctor turned and left without another word. Doyle and Cordelia looked at each other.
"Now what?" Cordelia asked.
"Now... we report back to Angel," Doyle said, still looking at the young woman, but this time more with nervousness and a small bit of fear rather than the adoration that had colored his gaze before. "Tell him what's happened."
"Shouldn't one of us stay here and keep an eye on her?" she reminded him. He stopped, turned back.
"Right.. um.. Cordie?" He grinned sheepishly, but it was a weak grin, not very cheerful.
"Sure, I'll watch her. Since you can't seem to be in the same room with her without drooling," she shrugged, with her usual put-upon air, and settled herself on the couch. Doyle looked at her, looked at Chantal, and left without a retort. Cordelia sighed, looked over at the woman standing in front of the window-wall, and sighed again. It was going to be a long day.
Doyle, meanwhile, was driving home amidst a sea of whirling and turbulent thoughts and emotions. His instincts still said to go and be with Chantal, but what he'd just learned from the doctor told him that that was possibly the worst thing he could do, and would only perpetuate his delusion. It was so unlikely that anything he or Angel felt for her was genuine as to be nigh impossible; the problem would be telling Angel that and then both of them managing not to fight over her for however long it took for the effect to wear off. He sighed heavily as he pulled up to Angel's apartment. This was going to be less than fun.
Or perhaps not. Angel met him inside the entryway, looking sheepish and slightly embarrassed. Doyle gave him an inquiring look. "Dr. Carter told me."
"Ah. He told me as well." They both fell into an awkward silence. "I left Cordelia with... with her."
"Good idea, I don't think either one of us should be around her.. right now..." Angel trailed off, attempting to look anywhere except at Doyle, who was doing much the same thing. Neither was comfortable with the other at the best of times, and this was not the best of times.
"Did she... what happened?"
"She tried to shoot us," Doyle's voice wasn't really distressed, but he did rub the back of his neck nervously, "Then she tried to shift her shape on us. Apparently, though, her body couldn't handle it... she collapsed. The doctor patched her up, then told us about the... that thing, and left."
Angel nodded absently, and there was another awkward silence. "I've been doing some checking up on Mark and Eve..." he said finally, heading into the office, "Apparently they were run in on several occasions for shoplifting, breaking and entering, petty theft, that kind of thing. Resisted arrest every time, big surprise there. They managed to get out on probation every time, though, charmed the judges... probably with that... yeah." The two men exchanged a look, then both quickly looked away.
"Kate, I presume," Doyle commented. Angel nodded.
"Apparently they beat up a couple of cops pretty bad, she warned against getting physical with these two." Angel smiled ruefully, but without much humor.
"Yeah, well, it's a bit late for that, isn't it?" Doyle commented wryly. "Did you get an address?"
"I did, but whether or not it's the right one..." Angel shrugged.
"Well, yeah, there is that," he allowed. Then he sat down abruptly, suddenly very exhausted. "Strange attractions aside, what do you think of her?"
Angel gave the other man an odd look. For the first time since he'd found out what was causing their emotions to go haywire, he wondered if Doyle's attraction to the young werewolf might be genuine. "I'm not sure," he began cautiously, "This really isn't the best set of circumstances to get to know her." From the look he received he got the feeling that evasions weren't what Doyle wanted to hear. "She's got a good sense of responsibility," he began slowly, "And ... justice, a sense of what's right. But the whole vendetta thing... " he shook his head, "I don't know. It's like.. she latches onto something and won't let go of it. Either that or..." He stopped.
"Or what?" Doyle said impatiently.
"Or..." Angel sighed, and looked directly at the other man. "Or she doesn't really have anything left to live for but her revenge."
Doyle just blinked.
"She said it herself, she's not human. Her values are centered around the pack, and around honor, and protecting the pack. And she thinks she's failed in all three. It's possible that it's completely devastated her."
"Yeah, and it's not like getting... attacked helped any." Cordelia still couldn't say the word 'rape'. But she did still manage to draw the stares of both men as she walked in. "She threw me out... almost literally," Angel wasn't sure if her rubbing her arm was deliberate drama or unconscious pain. "Said she didn't need a babysitter," Cordelia shrugged, "She has a major attitude problem, which probably means she's okay now, right?" Her voice was hopeful, almost begging the two men to tell her that it wasn't as bad as it seemed, even now. The utterly confused and helpless looks they directed at each other told her it was. "Never mind. Not like either of you two would know." She suddenly felt, for the first time, like the lone girl out in the boys club. It would have been immature of her to slam the door, she decided, so she settled for stalking out of the room in a huff. Doyle and Angel just glanced at each other again, at the door Cordelia had just walked through, then separated. None of this made any sense anymore.
Doyle spent at least an hour pacing the small office. Desk, computer, what passed for stereo, doorway, coffee machine, back to the desk. He had no idea what it was that bothered him about Angel's studied indifference, but HE wanted to go hit something. The idea that someone could do that to a girl - he slammed his fist into the wall. Then he stood there, shaking his hand for a bit. It never hurt in the movies, but there wasn't even any plaster flaking off to show for his pain. But he felt a little better. How could any man do that? Doyle just didn't understand - and maybe it was because he was a pansy excuse for a guy - but ... WHY? When, with a little effort, you could have a willing woman, granted maybe not the one you wanted (and he thought wistfully of Cordelia and Chantal), but so much better than... he couldn't even think of it. His mind also shied violently away from wondering how the women themselves handled it - that much insight into the female psyche he did NOT need. Desk, stereo, doorway, coffee machine, desk. And worse, they'd - they, even! Ugh! -- had done it to another girl, and two other guys. Doyle whirled again, and this time, plaster did flake. It still made his hand hurt, but somehow, it was satisfying. Doyle grinned, a grin that, if Cordelia and Angel had seen, would have been commented on as very out of character. He slammed the wall again and again, and it wasn't until his knuckles split and bled and the blood covered his hands and made them slick that he stopped. And looked in the mirror. And saw a sick, strange Hollywood version of himself, all vengeance-crying and rage. Damn it, Doyle, get a grip. You look like Chantal - Chantal! By now the drug the doctor gave her would have worn off, and he had the sinking feeling she'd be going after Eve and Mark again. Dr. Carter was out of town, there wouldn't be anyone to stop her - dammit! He had to make someone see - she was going to get herself killed.

Angel brooded - but then, there was nothing new about that. What was different this time was what he was brooding about. For all the monsters he'd killed, banished, and destroyed - he hadn't encountered this one before. It was somehow a more human monster, and a more dehumanizing monster at the same time. Human in that it was just a man - well, a group of men (Angel twitched at that thought), no supernatural powers or consorting with denizens of hell required. Dehumanizing in that... well, you just had to look at what had been done to Chantal to see the proof of that. Angel made a grimace that a creative imagination might have mistaken for a smile; he supposed the other three were the lucky ones. Their troubles were over; Chantal's were still going on. He wanted to empathize with her, wanted to be able to sympathize and say he understood... but he didn't, and deep down in places he would never admit to possessing to anyone, he didn't want to. She had been in a type of hell that was in some ways far worse than the one he had been in, and she would carry it with her for the rest of her life. And that might not be as long as his, but it was too long by half. And apparently she seemed to think so as well; he glanced at the note she had left, thought of her previous actions, coming back home to find she'd tried to hang herself... and then the pieces slammed together with almost tangible force in his head. Rather, the puzzle had been assembled, but it was only now that the picture smacked him in the head and said Hey wake up, stupid. Swearing to himself, he ran up the stairs at supernatural speeds.
Cordelia stood in front of the mirror, studiously refreshing her makeup. So much blusher, so much lipstick, so much eyeliner. There. Perfect, as always. She thought idly to herself about maybe making another shopping trip, and actually buying some fashionable clothes this time. The last time she had been shopping was when Angel had given her money and told her to outfit the Chantal girl... no, Cordie, she told herself, don't think about that, those are bad, harmful thoughts. Then she sighed, and told her mirror image, who was she kidding. Like it or not, it was something every woman had to deal with. She'd just done a really good job of ignoring it until it smacked her in the face. But again, like it or not, rape was a very real fear for every woman. Cordelia soberly wondered how she would deal with it. She didn't have very many close relationships under the best of circumstances, keeping herself distant and proud and fooling herself that she really was liked, and it worked, most of the time. But the alienation, and the fear, and the helplessness of it? Cordelia had been helpless only a few times in her life, and she hadn't liked any of them. Suddenly, she could empathize with Chantal. She didn't think Chantal had been helpless very many times in her life either. God, what could she be feeling now? No wonder she had thrown Cordelia out... she wouldn't want anyone else to see her helpless. But someone had to help her, she was going to get herself killed the way she was going... Angel. Angel could make everything better, if only the big lunk would listen. She threw the door open and stormed back into the room.

"Look, man..."
"...we've got to help her..."
"... save her from herself."
They all yelled at each other for a full five minutes before they realized they were all in agreement. Then Angel and Cordelia noticed Doyle's hands. He went and washed them off in the sink, and no one made any comment. They didn't comment on the cracking, bloodstained plaster on the wall, either. "Let's go," was all Angel said.
"She may have left by now," Doyle retorted, even though of the three of them, he was the one who was most clearly anxious to be gone. "Where are Mark and Eve? They're the ones we..." he grimaced, "I really hate to say it about ... bastards like these, but they're the ones we have to protect."
Angel stopped, blinked, "You're right..." and headed for the computer. His fingers flew across the keyboard, bringing up addresses for Mark and Eve; surprise, surprise, they were the same address. "What do you want to bet they also have a loft house that the whole pack shares," he muttered wryly. "All right. Let's go." He scribbled down the address and nearly ran out the door, the other two hot on his heels. For once, Cordelia didn't say anything about Angel's driving, they all just clung to the sides of the car and stared grimly out the windows. There was a car and two bikes outside the apartment when they got there, and Angel started to think that maybe they'd been worrying for nothing after all.
"So now what," Doyle wanted to know, "Do we just knock and they'll let us in?"
Angel looked at the door, "Something like that..." and pulled out a set of lockpicks from a jacket pocket. Doyle stared at him in appreciation, Cordelia in mild startlement.
"Hey, I didn't know you had that many talents..." Doyle began.
"Live and learn," Angel fiddled with the lock for a few seconds, then something snapped, and the door opened. From inside they could hear the sounds of bodies impacting on bodies, and faint growling noises. "Let's go," was all Angel had time to say, before he had to race Doyle for the dubious privilege of being first up the stairs and into the room where the fight was apparently going on. Cordelia ran reluctantly after them, protesting the whole way. "Hey... guys? Are we forgetting the not-fighting chick back here?"
Inside the room was something like utter chaos. Chantal was still standing, and from the amount of blood on her it was rather amazing that she was doing so. In one corner there was an unconscious man, Angel didn't recognize him. Standing not-quite directly in front of her was a tall, statuesque blonde, and next to the blonde growled a large black wolf. Angel recognized Eve from her ID pictures, and presumed the wolf was Mark.
Doyle watched Chantal with fascinated horror. She was still standing, making a brave what he guessed had to be last stand, covered in slowly-drying blood. Muscles rippled under her skin in that way that was rapidly becoming familiar, the way that meant she was shifting. But Doyle could tell, even from that distance, that she was swaying slightly on her feet, and exhausted. If they didn't do something, she was going to go down, and she was going to go down hard. Ah, the hell with it, he thought, and screamed, and charged.
All three of the still standing combatants stared at him like he'd gone completely insane. For a few moments, he wondered if he actually had. The likelihood of his being killed in this fight was starting to increase, and he felt it increase as he was abruptly pounced by the huge (and HEAVY, he rapidly noticed) wolf. The blonde woman, Eve, just smiled, and ran for the smaller woman. Chantal backhanded Eve into the floor, but what would have sent an ordinary human crashing to the ground merely caused Eve to shake her head a bit and flip to her feet. Chantal punched her this time, but Eve caught the fist easily, and pushed back and up, forcing Chantal to the floor. Chantal dropped abruptly, making the other woman overbalance, and kicked upwards and into her knee. There was a wet popping noise, and Eve fell to the ground, shrieking.
Doyle was getting pummeled by the wolf, and Angel suddenly had his hands full of at least three, perhaps as many as five other rippling weres. They were all fairly small, since they kept shifting back and forth from human to animal, but as soon as he'd thrown two away, another leapt onto him. He just kept punching, kicking, and hoping that they wouldn't wear him down before he could incapacitate them and help the other two, Doyle especially. Cordelia was hiding somewhere in the stairwell, but since she hadn't screamed yet, she must have been safe. Doyle, on the other hand, was getting ripped to shreds. The wolf's back paws were ripping down his thighs and calves, his front paws ripping at his shoulders and chest, and it was all Doyle could do to keep the snapping jaws away from his face and the body up enough to keep the claws from doing any significant damage. Then Chantal was there, slamming into the wolf and knocking him away with a hoarse scream. She screamed again as the wolf's claws sunk into her shoulder, then, still in human form, sunk her teeth into the soft part of the wolf's under-throat and bore down. They went down together, his claws still locked in her already-lacerated back, her teeth still locked in his throat.
Doyle stood weakly, fell back down as the last of Angel's opponents slammed into him, then got back up. Cordelia appeared, as if by magic, took one look at them and wordlessly began scouting the apartment for bandages. Angel looked at the both of them, then went over to where the entwined bodies had finally stopped writhing.
"He's dead," he said, without looking up. Doyle winced, staggered over.
"What about her?"
"Her pulse is weak," was all Angel would say. The amount of blood around the room said it all, though.. In her already weakened state, it was unlikely that she would live.
A scream from behind them suddenly reminded Angel and Doyle that if they didn't do something fast, it was unlikely that either of them would live as well. The scream died into a howling shriek as Eve shifted down, and came limping towards them on three good legs, her right hind leg trailing behind her limply. Doyle half-ducked, half-fell to the ground, yelping as he hit on some of the claw marks. Angel, however, met her halfway, slamming into her full tilt. This time, he learned from Chantal's mistake, and kept his arms around the other wolf's forelegs, vamping and sinking fangs into her neck before she had time to scent that what she hunted was not, in fact, human. Behind him he could hear Cordelia yelp and drop what sounded like large packages of bandages and medicine. Finally, he tasted the flow of blood slow, and then finally stop altogether, recognizing that her heart had stopped. He dropped the body distastefully, and walked over to Doyle and Cordelia.
"She's going to need blood transfusions... and probably antibiotics," Doyle was mumbling absently, trying to disengage Chantal from the dead Mark. Angel winced inwardly as he realized what had happened; Doyle had actually fallen for the werewolf. It wasn't all pheromones and defense mechanisms. Cordelia was looking at him, a silent question. Angel just shook his head.
"It's over. We can't do anything for her."
"Don't say that!" Doyle nearly shouted at him, "Don't you give up on her. She wouldn't give up... she won't." He'd finally managed to get her free of the wolf-corpse, and had pulled her a bit away. She'd given no sign that she was even conscious, or alive. "She's strong..." his voice was starting to lose conviction. "She wouldn't give up."
"Doyle, she's done what she came here to do. She doesn't want ..."
"Damn it." Doyle sat back. If Angel hadn't known better, he would have sworn the man was crying. "Damn it."
Cordelia touched his shoulder with an alcohol-soaked wad of gauze where the werewolf had scratched him; he shoved her away roughly and stared at the wall. She made a small sighing noise, and he looked at her, then sighed himself and let her clean him up. Angel just stood over the two of them, watching and standing guard. So, when the two figures detached themselves from the shadows and began crawling towards them, he was the only one who noticed, and sank into a fighting stance before he realized who it was.
"What the hell are you two doing here?" he asked, a bit more roughly than he had meant. They essentially ignored him; only Star tossed him an unreadable look that for some reason made Angel step back. They surrounded Chantal's prone body, began to run their hands all over her. Doyle tried to stand up.
"Hey!!" Cordelia pushed him down, and the two werewolves ignored him. Star actually began to lick her cheek, Liselle licked her shoulder. Both of them curled up around the woman, making soft noises halfway between a croon and a yip. Angel took another step back, Doyle tried to take a step forward. "Just what do you think you're..." and then he stopped.
Chantal's fingers began to twitch, Liselle and Star each took a hand in one of their own. Her eyes fluttered, and Liselle kissed her eyelids. Then her chest heaved, she gasped, and opened her eyes. Immediately, the other two were helping her to a sitting position, Star was practically climbing into her lap, and Liselle was supporting her, grinning and licking her neck and giggling. Doyle, Cordelia, and Angel looked on in utter amazement. They slowly stood, and backed away (Doyle almost had to be dragged, but the strangeness of it was getting to him at last).
"Thank you." They turned, stared. Liselle and Star were supporting Chantal, but they all three of them were standing, and looking at the other three with an intensity that bordered on the disturbing. "Thank you for saving us."
Angel nodded once, Cordelia and Doyle just stared. Then they left without too many backward glances.
Upon reaching home, life resumed some semblance of normality. Cordelia complained about the amount of work put in for nothing, at least she did until the werewolves delivered a substantial check to their offices, with a short note saying that since they had aided the pack, they were entitled to a share of the spoils. Angel commented that he hadn't heard that phrase in a century, and the other two just gave him a funny look. Doyle was extremely quiet for the next week; Angel surmised that falling for a werewolf and being summarily rejected before he'd even had a chance to realize that he'd fallen was eating at him, and left him alone. He also made Cordelia leave him alone, but Cordelia had drawn her own conclusions and decided to pursue Angel for a while, and more importantly, her movie career. Doyle began to spend more nights at the pub. Angel worried, but life went on.
He was actually walking back from one of those nights at the pub, having sat in front of his drink all night and barely touching it, when the voice spoke to him from the shadows. "What's cookin' good lookin'?"
He blinked, and whirled around to stare wide-eyed and gape-mouthed. He knew that voice, not quite low, not quite raspy anymore, soft and deep for a woman, though, and throaty, like the voice at the other end of a 1-900 number. "Chantal??"
"I didn't get a chance to say good-bye before, what with being mostly unconscious and all. I thought to rectify that error." Her mode of speech skidded wildly from SoCal to something stiff and formal; Doyle's mind whirled. Some of that must have shown on his face, because she smiled slightly, shyly. "I told you, we're not human. I get more information out of most of my five senses than you numb-noses would believe," her voice was teasing, but it barely registered. Doyle was still blinking over the fact that she'd reappeared, and was talking to him. Then the subtext that she had put into that sentence finally registered, and he felt himself flushing bright red. She giggled, and Doyle cursed his heritage that made his discomfort so painfully obvious.
"Yeah, well. You're better off this way," he shrugged, very self-conscious.
"You mean, you're better off this way," she retorted, but she stared at the ground in a way that made him realize that, as awkward as he felt, she felt equally as uncomfortable. "Look," she began, then, "I don't know how these mating rituals go with the humans, but..."
It was so ridiculous Doyle had to burst out laughing. "What?" She blinked, perplexed, and then began to blush, herself. "Well, yeah, I know about dating and stuff, but I've never actually..." he was still laughing. "Well, it's not like I..." Doyle had to lean up against a wall to keep from falling over. "Oh, damn. I'm doing this wrong." She flushed again, turned and started to walk away.
"Hey, no, I didn't mean that," Doyle stopped laughing abruptly, suddenly alarmed. He took several steps forward, grabbed her arm, and she jumped back, inadvertently yanking her arm out of his grasp. They both ow-ed; neither of their wounds had healed completely. "Look... umm... okay, I haven't had too many stranger invitations for a date, but..." he blushed, started stammering again, and fished for words, "I haven't had any from a woman as beautiful as you," he made a gallant bow (or what he thought of as one), looked up at her... and blinked, as he realized he was no longer trapped by her eyes anymore. She seemed to be trapped by his, though; she was staring at him intensely.
"You don't.. mind, or anything? I mean, you don't think it's... strange? " Chantal was still staring at him, and Doyle blinked as an unexpected thought came to him. She'd been one half of an alpha pair of her pack, but she hadn't been mated to the alpha male. Which meant, as far as he could tell from all the lectures he'd had over the past couple weeks, that she'd never mated at all; wolves mated for life, or so he'd heard. He wondered if it was because she'd tried that with a human, and had been pushed away by the strangeness. His mind flashed back to a conversation he'd had with the doctor a couple days after the last fight, and he swore at it mentally.
"Sometimes the were mate with humans, too," the doctor had said, glancing sideways at Doyle, "It doesn't happen very often, but sometimes it does. And usually, it's an almost stronger bond because of the differences."
There is NO reason I should remember that that clearly, Doyle told himself fiercely. No reason at all. Chantal was still staring at him; that was his cue to answer. "Nah, we all have our little quirks," he said, with a perfectly straight face. She blinked at him, realized he was teasing, and burst out laughing. "I'm only half human myself, you know," he tossed out, and was proud of the fact that it came out in a completely casual-sounding manner.
Chantal only nodded. "I'd wondered," she said thoughtfully, then grinned. "Well, you were on your way out of the pub so I assume you've had somewhat to drink... have you bothered to have dinner yet?"
"Dinner? And what might that be when it's at home?" he grinned back, and they walked on down the street together. And if, somewhere in the walking, their hands met and fingers interlaced, neither of them made the slightest comment on it.